we'll continue to have more from ben and arwa and also wolf blitzer in jerusalem. i want to bring in a spokesman for the israel foreign ministry. i appreciate you being with us. there's been a lot of talk, a lot of rumors over the last 24 hours about a possible cease-fire, about a negotiated settleme settlement. i know the israeli cabinet met this evening. what's the latest on that? >> i can't say because, obviously, while negotiations are going on, we're not going to disclose any details. all i can say is that there are contacts, and we are trying to explore diplomatic ways to end this. but as we have stated since the beginning of this operation, the only objective of this operation, the only objective we are trying to achieve is to stop rocket fire on israeli civilians, but not just to obtain a short-term truce that will be broken again and again by hamas but to obtain the is he sayi cessation for a very long period. we have tried to explore diplomatic ways by alerting the security council, by trying to file official complaints with the security council and hopin